Indeterminism is gappy
In his 1973 essay “Mechanism and Responsibility,” Daniel Dennett correctly notes that indeterminism (the denial of determinism) must be gappy:
[T]he open question now is not whether mechanistic explanation of human motion is possible, but just whether it will ultimately have crucial gaps of randomness (like the indeterminists’ mechanistic explanation of electrons) or not….
As Dennett recognizes, before any indeterministic event occurs, there must be a gap so that the prior conditions don’t necessitate the event’s occurrence. I presume that’s why he calls such gaps “crucial” to indeterministic explanations. But when he says “the indeterminists’ mechanistic explanation,” he seems not to recognize that the unfolding of any indeterministic event can’t be fully mechanistic. At some point in any indeterministic unfolding, one event occurs before another event without a mechanism connecting the two events. That’s the gap! One thing happens, then another ‒ end of story. Otherwise there’s no gap.
